Film Screening: Tambu

Tambu is a documentary exploring TambuFest, a day-long celebration of drumming and dance in Jamaica. TambuFest was conceived of and produced by University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Deborah A. Thomas, musician Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn, and Dr. Nicholas Ferguson, a medical doctor and drummer. The word “tambu” is used throughout the African Diaspora to describe various drumming traditions and styles. The film highlights how Jamaican folk practitioners create community spaces through prayer, the sharing of food, drumming, song, and dance. Combining footage from the TambuFest festival, with documentary film from plantation ruins in Eastern Jamaica, slave dungeons in Ghana, and archival photographs, the film considers how these drumming and dance rituals remember African Diasporic histories of slavery, indenture, and survival. The film foregrounds the intergenerational character of the festival and the ways that Caribbean drumming and dance practices—and by extension Caribbean histories—are taught and transformed between elders and younger people. Through dance performances we see how cultural memory and continuity are captured in movement. Forms such as kumina, kromanti, dinki-mini, and djembe drumming represent important sites of African retention, with clear connections to West Africa and lyrical references to the plantation. These traditions narrate the past physical displacement of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, while also representing ongoing resistance to cultural displacement. (23 minutes)

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